


Red

by viraseii



Category: Original Work
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 18:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18900655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viraseii/pseuds/viraseii
Summary: Decided I'd post some of my poetry on here.I consent to the Organization of Transformative Works (OTW) terms of service and explicitly deny rights to reprint, share, or redistribute this work on any platform not owned by OTW. #





	1. I miss red.

It’s like rain, the way you speak. Endless and all over my skin with your soggy green eyes.

Your silvered carelessness washes away strings I thought I held. A year ago, Earth was one planet.

But when I listen to you, I forget the world exists.

It’s in your leather bound wallet, strewn to the corner of your first dusty table. The shining hoops that ornament your clear white visage.

It’s in your weekends. It’s in your walk.

Every hour is gruel. Every stride is ten.

It’s like a storm, the way you surround me. I am trapped in an unseeing eye. All breath robbed from my pleading, invisible chest. I don’t exist, not even when I bleach my own skin to be seen.

It’s like the onslaught of clean acid needles that pierce my face, that cloud my glasses, that blind me and leave me sopping and disoriented.

I don’t belong in your world; I’m just a flicker you quench, even when you smile.


	2. How do you identify in relation to this world?

Who am I?

as a result of you?

I think that's awfully presumptuous for you to ask.

After all, aren't you the one

cowering in your pale blankets

nervously listening to my tongue,

hiding behind your golden badge -

Forged from my wealth -

to make extra doubly completely sure

of your own safety?

Why are you so scared? If we're the rotten ones

why are you the one unable to sleep on your clean white pillow?

Is it your own conscience you see in me

that drives you to run from me

and shoot me

and cover your own eyes?

If you're that terrified, is it because you know something I don't?

I'll tell you who I am

in relation to myself;

I am a creature struggling to connect with the history in your ashes.

My obsession with fire is one to seek redemption and truth

but if all you have seen it give is death,

is that why you fear me?

After all, you reared me.

Slaughtered my mother until her scars turned me and all my children white with her toughened skin.

You bred me,

bleached me,

drained me,

and now I understand why you worry.

I'm only due to inherit your cruelty.


	3. jean sofa

The denim lady is friends with strangers.

Perhaps as a means of taking a risk

or to remain as desperately dark as the moon.

She lounges with four new people every week.

It's not in arrogance.

It's in fear.

Glue that is held in place must adhere.

Running from time is running from despair.

Rather than one hand in marriage,

isn't it better to be lonely,

and make a thousand strangers smile?


	4. Crystal

Circular hallway. A shopping mall. Busy streets. The weather is always pleasantly warm, unfiltered gold spilling over the edges of dark maroon awnings. I know I’ve been here before, and I know what’s going to happen to me.

A store full of gold jewelry. Not for me, but for my love, for my hate, for my fear. Swinging javelins. I’m fighting my demons like a roman gladiator, and behind me there is an endless ocean, and a six foot long pier with no strings.

Once I was here in a prom dress. There’s a glass elevator and an active shooter across the street - I know what I’ll do, how I’ll survive through direct dismissal of orders. They think rebellion is disrespectful, but I’d rather be stuck going up elevators and out on dusty streets than lying like a dead princess on a gymnasium floor.

Every time I cross the fountain in the middle, I’m positive I can make it to the end of the street - I’m positive I won’t lose my direction, that eventually the sun will move past its noon point in the sky, and I’ll reach the place I need to go, but it’s always too far.

The sun doesn't move. The phone doesn’t work. The shooter is gone and the jewelry is destroyed, and my navy blue elevator still can’t keep count of the stories.


	5. Emerald

Viprous, she lies lazy on humid eves.

Dangerous, she yawn open her own thirst for simplicity.

Deadly, her beauty is bewitching in its novelty.

Venomous, she loves you.


	6. Clear

Perfection.

A lack of color, rain you can’t touch.

Not transparent, not seeable.

Deeper than the ocean and twice as vast.

The time between 12 and 12 and 12. The days.

Absolute dissolution - a craving for the mundane.

Satiety bereft within empty plains.

The number i, opposite of a circle.

Stillness - the preservation of atrophy itself.

Not water, it’s clearer. Not fire, it’s brighter.

Loss of dimension.

Ultimate realization.


	7. Aishiteru

You’re  
       Electric and green with life.  
       Gold, like a petal in early dawn.  
       The morning, silent,  
       glowing,  
       singing through your skin  
       caressing my heart with immobile fingers.  
I’m  
       Loud, a river, crushed by nightfall but just as steady.  
       Fish, popping up for air each time you smile.  
       Sand,  
       devoured by your waves,  
       warm under your rays,  
       shifting with your gaze.


	8. Nostalgia

to fracture - to fill lilac with streaks of gold.  
faded chalk, forgotten like ivy,  
twilight blue engulfing and transforming  
every bird and rose  
to petrify - to encase this moment  
in icy lemon yellow  
pink like the fading dawn  
flickering like stars  
lost to inky black but still reaching past the endline.  
void of light  
but still glimmering.


	9. Black Cat

Parisian rain is romantic

in its own right, I think,

and this is why my father

is unable to move on from you.

I know you're gone.

I can picture your fading umbrella

like it was just this morning,

the pigeons squealing at the sky

breaking over our heads.

I don't think he knows.

Love is fleeting, I've learned -

effervescent in the threads

of meaningless moments. I know I love you

like I know the bars of my own window.

Mother, I miss you. Mother, I love you.

I don't know that my father

knows what love is, anymore.

It's twisted itself, wrought into

the frames of his glasses

with all its thorns facing outward.

He gazes at your painting hour

after hour, where

the green of your eyes

spills out in emeralds and glinting gold.

There is a choice I will have to make

and I don't know if I can do it.

I will always fight for you, mother, but

so will he,

and

I will find myself on the wrong end of his sword.

There will be a choice that I'll have to make.

I beg you for the strength

to carry me forward

through what I know is right -

I beg you for the strength

to stand up to him,

to help him see what I can see.

I beg you for the strength to love

even that which I must leave

because I know you can do it

or I'd like to think so.

I beg you for the strength

to leave

that which I love

behind.

And that's my flaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thats written about adrien agreste LOL


	10. In the wake of birth

I.  
Smoke swirls with laziness and a malintent through painted lips - lips that have travelled further than my own two feet, that have seen god and loved the devil, lips that speak pure gold and nectar, too sweet for our strings not to rot and curl upon their own ugly selves. Her fingers are long, painted too, like the artist she is, a clockwork heart spinning instruments of deception and beauty in one breath. I am enslaved, laid bare before palest sapphires with the power to manipulate loss and love. Like the stem of a flower, I am crushed, torn apart in attempt to appease that which is beloved.

II.  
Lights stream through thousands of people before I can see them. Colors I can’t name, spinning through snow and wheels, gyrating in a reminder - I am caged, defined by sight, by name, by visage. Before I grow skin and bones, I am a soul - or am I? What is the shape of my being, the presence of my wit, the transgressions of my existence? By consequence of history and culture I have already been defined before I am even conceived in the womb. I do not know where her pity comes from, ugly and writhing like a coiled up parasite. In each dimension of myself I have folded away from her, she claws with rage.

III.  
Summer is scented with freedom and the breath of life itself, for those who have the gold in their skin to identify with the sun. For those who possess snow under their skin and can tolerate your burning wrath, for those who can iron out their own creases and become smooth as glass, offer you no traction for your nails and no crevice for your mouth. What is the blank expanse of sky if not for your searing presence? If I am a single shard, a lone needle of frost, clinging to cobwebs abandoned in the winter, and when you awaken my widow, I will be dead.

IV.  
I want to rise with you. As much as I want to love you and breathe you, the embers in your mouth choke me. I am adrift in your own hazy eyes, lost like a sailor falling into the night sky. You will never look back at the east, where I lie - floating on a tendril of ash and dissolving in your smell. I was a creature of the night before I saw you, and when I look at the sun I am blind. If you are july, I am the final leaf on a branch, reddened and burned, clinging to your long-faded warmth, wishing we could exist in the same plane, wanting to touch you again, else fall and die.


	11. Heat Death

The universe is subsiding slowly to dust, they say.  
The stars will soon freeze over and die  
Yet with their light under our soles we stay.

I understand, now, when holding me you sway  
And dance like we’re learning to fly.  
The heat death is inevitable, they say.

We’re pulled and stretched every which way-  
If only we could stay together, thigh to thigh.  
Starlight refuses to let us pull away.

We’re going to leave them someday.  
(The farther we run, the less we have to lie.)  
The people were turning red and the universe gray.

Remember when we watched night become day?  
Smiles close, my love reflected in your eye?  
Sometimes, love isn’t what they say.

A woman. A distorted and perverse craze.  
Less and less are we allowed to cry.  
We are one with that cosmic decay.  
We are eternal. Timelessness is in our DNA.


	12. Song of Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> litearlly i fucking hate this poem so much but it was inspired by tommy pico's work and i want to keep it as like. a representation of my growth?? god i hate this poem so so so so so so so fucking much i feel embarrassed just thinking about it

My mom asked me why I have a lesbian necklace.

I said, it’s just a necklace.

_How do I tell her_

_it’s because I have a lover_

_in California?_

_Well, not anymore, yeah,_

_I was listening to Marina_

_when we broke up but I loved them,_

_felt good being called “useless lesbian.”_

_I’m sorry I didn’t call_

_I’m sorry I couldn’t fall_

_It’s hard to trust you_

_when your smile is decades through_

_trees and desert and I can’t kiss you_

_like I want to._

_Last prom we danced through_

_phones and I wanted to_

_hold you, my hands around your neck_

_instead of my phone case red and black._

_I think the more time I spend in college the gayer I get_

_men are obnoxious, I’m sorry mom, I can’t_

_devote myself to these papers, they’re too dry_

_and flimsy to hold me when I cry_

_and you’re too far to keep me up high_

_when I fall, I want it to be in her arms, and whisper, “hi.”_

_“How you doin’?” Let’s binge watch friends and talk shit about Ross._

_I want to buy Starbucks every day and swim all night._

_Boujee that I want to be, I say fuck homework, let me sleep with her for a night._

_Mom, you can massage my period cramps but you can’t help me._

_You don’t know, when my womb bleeds, how horny it makes me._

_“Do you have ibuprofen?” she asked me._

_“No, but I can touch you.”_

_Only, I don’t know you._

_To reside within the pages of your binders of film_

_will I ever make it, or is this just a whim_

_a wish for my dream girl_

_in a summer surfing world_

_blonde or brown and sunny smile_

_long hair and fingers unraveling curls_

_dancing under stars and kissing in october_

_cold at 60 degrees, holding me when I shiver_

_loving me until I can’t remember_

_my own name, only hers._

_My friend says, how could you like girls?_

_They’re scary._

_If a boy is mad, he’ll punch something and get over it._

_If it’s a girl, she will fuck you up._

_And I say, “God, I hope so.”_

How do I explain that to you, mother?


	13. sand

my feelings for you are retro blue and 80's radio love  
you're my jukebox song, the neon arcade that rings with copper through my bones  
dangerously delicate like stalks of yellow foxglove

like iced lemonade, you set off fireworks in my heart  
people like us are seashells, we belong under the waves at the beach  
we dance our own silent song of poetry and film in the dark  
one strawberry milkshake, 2 straws, turquoise double booth side by side with the night  
our window reflections flash with meteors like technicolor stars as they burn  
midnight next to you is balmy, euphoric, glittering eyelashes that flutter like fronds of a palm

you're the reality angels themselves can only dream of  
even winter through your eyes glows with candied hailstones  
my feelings for you are retro blue and 80's radio love

if you'd like, dance with me, i'll spend eternity like this, palm to palm  
ballroom or swing or anything to feel that laughter strum my heart  
i'm scared because you make these paper walls smolder and burn  
all my barriers and my guard break like waves at a limestone beach  
maybe i only love you by sun, and long for something truer by night?  
or maybe i should grasp tightly to that light and exile my fear of the dark

i could topple all over myself in this skating rink with the tiniest shove  
but, again, red october finds joy in even ghosts and tombstones  
dangerously delicate like stalks of yellow foxglove

like the moon, the stars, christmas lights - you're pretty in the dark  
look away, i'm inking out the fate in the lines of your palm  
you're a mixtape that awakens me like fireflies at night  
you could be new york and coca cola to my times square heart  
we'll race yellow stripes and red laces just to enjoy a popsicle at the beach  
pull me underwater and teach my blue velvet soul to burn

you pair shaved rainbow ice with the warmth my hands have been robbed of  
like a drive-in movie or a symphony of nothing but trombones  
my feelings for you are retro blue and 80's radio love

humans fall in love like rivers rush, like gold glitters, like bonfires burn.  
we choose to dive through nebulae and brave all endless dark.  
even when ash falls from the cosmos or whales wash up on the beach  
we fold ourselves into heartbreak like wind in the leaves of a palm  
know that it is just my human nature when i trust you with my heart  
understand this masochistic euphoria when we hold hands at night

care for me like you would care for a flower or a dove  
and i'll love you back like a honeybee buzzes and drones  
dangerously delicate like stalks of a yellow foxglove

don't shatter my trust and i'll welcome you at the end of the night  
i'll open for you and try for once not to seal my heart  
light my fire, i promise you i won't flinch at the burn  
i want you to be my peach lantern in the dark  
we'll run our of gas, stop to admire every summery palm,  
blow bubbles and kick sand into the wind, stranded on this beach

because i've always wanted to live on a beach  
reach into water and stars every warm spring night  
i've always wanted to intertwine two lines of either palm  
and feel the heat of a candle while ignoring its burn  
i've always wished for someone to guide me when it's dark  
i've always dreamed of sharing my heart

you're versicolor paint i could never grow sick of  
we belong at pastel neon diners, trading heart-shaped stones  
my feelings for you are retro blue and 80's radio love  
dangerously delicate like stalks of yellow foxglove


End file.
